Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [8]
As we both prayed about where to start the church, we felt called to pursue the seemingly impossible. Seattle was the least-churched city in the nation, and the least likely person to attend church there was a college-educated single person, especially a man. So, after fasting and praying over the decision, we decided to plant a church where the need was greatest, although the work was hardest and resourcing was least. We began gathering the core group of maybe a dozen people for our church plant in our home. From the outside, our marriage looked okay. We were still having weekly date nights and were faithful to each other, but in reality we were more life partners than lovers and friends, working jobs and hosting Bible studies to serve others. All our conversations revolved around other people and how to serve and help them. It seemed to be the “right” way to do ministry, but neglect of your own marriage is never the right way.
Making issues even worse, I (Grace) realized I hadn’t really followed the Genesis command to leave my family and cleave to Mark as my new family. I still called my mom daily and complained when Mark and I were fighting; we spent all our holidays, birthdays, and vacations with my side of the family, rather than starting some of our own family traditions. My parents had keys to the house and would stop by at any time unannounced, so we lacked privacy and I didn’t see it as a problem. I called them “my family,” which made Mark feel as if he and I weren’t family. I had to learn to pray and work through our conflict differently, plan some of our own traditions and memories, set healthy boundaries of privacy, and refer to Mark as “my family” and others as our “extended family.”
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We did ministry nearly every night of the week, with a few thousand people in total passing through our home in a given year, and many even living with us at various times. I (Mark) am an introvert who prefers home to be a refuge, which meant the lack of distinction between ministry and home was killing me. All the while, though, our sex life was still less than stellar, and it became increasingly frustrating in the next few years as we taught premarital counseling to a few hundred couples. Every quarter a new class would pack into our home to hear, among other things, my detailed teaching from the Bible on the freedoms and joys of married sex, after which I would go to bed without enjoying much of it. My bitterness grew.
Our marriage was functional but not much fun. As we approached the launch of the church, Grace was pregnant with our first child and suffering from painful stress-related issues caused by her public relations job, which culminated in me apologizing for not bearing the entire financial burden for our family. She gladly came home from work, and we lived on a very small income from outside jobs and support, because the church plant could not afford to pay me during the first few years.
In this season we shifted into ministry-and-family mode, neglecting our intimacy and failing to work through our issues. This became apparent to me when my pregnant wife came home from a hair appointment with her previously long hair (that I loved) chopped off and replaced with a short, mommish haircut. She asked what I thought, and could tell from the look on my face. She had put a mom’s need for convenience before being a wife. She wept.
One night, as we approached the birth of our first child, Ashley, and the launch of our church, I had a dream in which I saw some things that shook me to my core. I saw in painful detail Grace sinning sexually during a senior trip she took after high school when we had just started dating. It was so clear it was like watching a film—something I cannot really explain but the kind of revelation I sometimes receive. I awoke, threw up, and spent the rest of the night sitting on our couch, praying, hoping it